Specific Phobias

People with specific phobias have an excessive or unreasonable fear of specific objects and situations such as heights, spiders, dogs, storms or elevators.These fears lead to changes in behaviour to avoid the object or situation.

To overcome this fear the person needs to gradually confront the feared object or situation and stay until the anxiety begins to reduce. We now know that this involved new learning – learning that the object is not necessarily dangerious. In practive, the object or situation must be confronted regularly and frequently to overcome the fear, even once the gear has improved